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Evil: Texas School Shooting Raises the Specter of Wickedness in the Human Heart

When an 18-year-old shot and killed 19 little children at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, like all historical villains, in his mind he did what he must.

Evil

When an 18-year-old shot and killed 19 little children at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, like all historical villains, in his mind he did what he must. But what kind of wickedness in the human heart moves someone to commit such an evil act?

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23 replies on “Evil: Texas School Shooting Raises the Specter of Wickedness in the Human Heart”

People try to blame video games, competitive sports, music, what have you – but the honest truth is that none of those things would goad someone into a broken action unless the person was already fundamentally broken at that point. Normal human inhibitors keep whole people from doing such things. When those inhibitors aren’t installed, if it isn’t one thing ‘causing’ the action it will be another. There isn’t enough bubble wrap and fluffy bunnies in the world to keep a fundamentally broken person from being broken. You can’t ‘narrative’ them out of it. The brokenness occurs when the software is being installed, and that occurs way before video games and movies ever come into play.

From a purely secular standpoint, the entire point of child rearing is to produce a stable, functional adult who can effectively take his/her place in society.

It is precisely to “build in” these important things, to install the right software, with proper checks and error checking and error throwing. Replace the default procedure throwFit() with an array of more constructive ways to deal with life when it’s not running smoothly — and, ideally, to take corrective action.

Now it takes a long, constructive dissertation to get there, but religion is a part of that software. It practically needs to be installed at the bootstrapping level, so that it underlies all of the sophisticated functionality that eventually runs on top of it, like how to cook rice or build a car or electrical engineering.

Yes, you are describing the difference between parents creating a civilized human being with the help of the greater civilization around them, and two people combining their gametes to produce a human shaped animal.

There are still no guarantees because the best efforts of caring, correct parents can still yield a monster and a kid with no advantages at all can become a world class economist or neurosurgeon. You cannot assure the future of a child but you can run the odds up pretty high in his favor.

These talks that Bill and Zo have are essential to addressing the biggest problems of our country; the religious aspects of our culture are key and need to be discussed. John Adams said that our constitution only worked with a Godly nation, and I say that our society also only works when people understand that there is something bigger than themselves. Very insightful installment of the Virtue Signal. Bravo!

God-haters often jump on situations like this by challenging believers with, “Where was God when this happened?” The proper 2-part response is, “Don’t blame MY God for what YOUR ‘god’ did;” and, “My God was the same place where He was when His Son was hanging on the cross for our sin.”

Where was god? Exiled from that person’s life by their own choices, and that is a large part of the problem.

Also hate me the critical academic type on this forum, but unidimensional explanations of complex social phenomena are always a sign of a extremely limited thinker.

Although certainly there are plenty of people who had fine childhoods (Although probably with an IV of entitlement dripping into their veins throughout their whole developmental period), who nevertheless grow up to become bitter and resentful and dwell on that for months and years, inviting the devil into their heart and forming a creative union with it. And their brooding goes from resentment to murderousness to genocide to eventually something that can best be described as an attempt to take revenge on God for the structure of being.

I think the simplest way I could describe how to create a monster in a nutshell is to give them such an unconscionably hellish childhood that as a young child they are forced to let go of their conscience and any sense of relation to other human beings in order to simply survive.

I have far far much more to say than just this, but I just want to note Jordan Peterson‘s grave observation that children — mostly males who are predisposed to be highly aggressive and consist about 5% of the toddler population — who are not properly socialized to play with other children by the age of four, there is basically no hope for them to live in the world in a way that isn’t positively counterproductive. Of course there’s lots more to it than that. I just have a little doubt that this was the case in all situations as these.

You have it there,it’s the lack of an husband in the family that causes the problem. So it’s no wonder the destruction of the family was their first task.

I gave up a long time ago on wondering why people do evil, sick things. It’s a fallen world, whatever evil can manifest itself will do so and in the worst possible way it has the means to.

You can rarely prevent evil. Evil is not only smart but it’s crafty. Evil thinks of things that would never occur to the non-Evil and that’s one of its strengths. You can train yourself to think like Evil in order to anticipate it but doing so you run the risk of becoming Evil yourself.

Better then than trying to anticipate Evil is to prepare and be ready to stand against it wherever it manifests. Evil likes the weak, they’re easier to hurt, like for instance children. When Evil does harm to the weak and innocent the harm is multiplied by the loss and grief caused to those who didn’t even get a scratch.

This is why for the ages of our civilization the strong and truly virtuous have protected the weak. It is a means of thwarting Evil that avoids the risk of becoming Evil.

Now in the era of Post-modern Neo-Marxist Intersectionality and the ascendency of the poisonous thoughts of people like Fourcault, Sartre and Derrida (said thoughts among others included the basest and foulest perversions and pedophilia) — The weak and innocent must not be effectively protected from Evil because to do so would vastly diminish the pool of victims available to the Left for political leverage.

There’s no knowing “why” a villain would shoot up a bunch of school kids because “why” implies rationality and Evil is not constrained to the rational.

That said, the “why” is directly related to the “how” and the “how” is something we can do something about by protecting our weak and innocent. In the case of school shootings and other active shooter scenarios one very prominent fact stands out in bold relief …

The incident does not proceed more than seconds after the arrival of a good man (or woman) with a gun. However much damage and carnage Evil is able to inflict is limited in time and space by the duration between the onset of the event and the arrival of a second gun in the hands of a person prepared and ready to stand against Evil when it manifests.

The solution to this particular Evil seems pretty obvious to me. Make certain there are guns in the hands of people ready and willing to stand against Evil wherever it manifests. This may not wholly prevent Evil from striking but it absolutely will limit the degree of slaughter it can accomplish.

You wouldn’t expect a secretary to work without the tools of the trade. You wouldn’t expect a groundskeeper to gnaw the grass and shrubs with his own teeth. You give a truck driver a truck, several hundred thousands of foot-pounds of lethal kinetic energy hurtling down the highway, he’ll never deliver the load if he has to carry it on his back. You equip people to meet the demands of the thing they need to do.

So ask yourself why does the Left so enthusiastically oppose arming people, guards or teachers or whoever seems best, to oppose someone who comes to school with murder in mind? Why does the Left want to be certain that second gun never arrives, or arrives as late as possible?

Because to the Left, your kids are expendable and a worthwhile sacrifice on the road to political power. That’s why.

100% disagree, people are voluntarily exposed to violent images and videos all the time, and instead they are completely desensitized. What they need to do is go back and read 20th century history and learn enough about hell to scare the shit out of them enough to turn them towards the light. Carl Jung all the way. If you never face your shadow it will come out in the worst way at the most unexpected of times

Wow, so you don’t agree that kids deserve to be protected in school? Interesting.

You don’t agree that the fact is when a second gun arrives in the hands of a righteous person who confronts the murderer the carnage ends? Really? Because that’s not even my opinion, that’s a fact.

You don’t agree that people should prepare themselves to stand against evil when it manifests, prepared to resist it with force and courage? You don’t agree that people should have the tools needed to resist force with force? Really?

I’m amazed at that. Truly.

As far as “desensitizing” goes, that’s a bullshit excuse. It’s not the same thing to watch a movie or play a game as it is to go out and blow someone’s shit to the wind. I served in the Marines, it’s not the same thing at all. Take my word for it. It doesn’t even look the same. Not even close.

If watching a movie or playing a video game “desensitizes” someone to point where they would go out and commit real carnage, there was something badly, seriously wrong with them long before they ever saw fake violence on a screen. In which case they probably would have committed some sort of atrocity anyway.

Seeing fake violence on a video screen doesn’t turn an otherwise decent, stable, well raised kid into a raging murderer. If it did there would be a lot more of them. For every kid that shoots up a public venue there are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of kids who watch the same fake violence and would never dream on their worst day of doing something like that. It takes badly messed up parenting, a lack of a good home life, and a bent brain to get there.

Because if “desensitizing” is a real thing then you’d better lock your doors and arm yourself. Thousands of military veterans have witnessed the real thing and if anyone was going to be “desensitized” and go around slaughtering people it would be us. Lucky for you just the opposite is true.

I doubt your ignorance on this topic is bliss, for you. Your ignorance is certainly not a virtue if you “disagree 100%” with everything I’ve said.

If you disagree with something I said, try telling me specifically what you disagree with and why. Then we can discuss it. All you did was drive-by bomb-throwing and I’m not a bit impressed.

EDIT

C’mon, Carli, I’ve given you two days to respond as of this edit. If you’re going to run around saying you disagree with protecting children from maniacs and calling someone ignorant who says that’s a must then the least you could do is answer for your own words. If you’re going to pose as a Jungian and posture what a brilliant understanding of humanity you have then let’s hear it. Trot that book-learning out here and let’s take a good look at what it is you think you know.

Bill, just look to the first time we see John Wayne in the movie “Big Jake” he rescues a Shepherd who was being hung. I just find the synchronicty of this not only fascinating but just more evidence of the Divine at work.

REPLY

One of my favorite movies of all time and that is a great scene.

About the mass shootings, here’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about:
In all the mass shootings from Columbine to April 2022, 90+% of the perpetrators were taking, or had recently stopped taking, anti-depressant prescription drugs. Another was taking an illegal drug. Several others were Muslim jihadists. Dillan Roof is a racist white supremist, but was he on one of these drugs?
I hear the media say that the shooters in Buffalo & Texas both had mental problems. If that’s the case then they could very well have been on these mind altering prescription drugs.
Some documented side effects of these drugs: psychosis, paranoia, aggression , hostility, thoughts about suicide, etc. They don’t dare mention thoughts about mass homicide. That would cause public outcry that would force the FDA to remove such a drug from the market.
I have an autistic grand-daughter, now grown, who was diagnosed (by a teacher) in grammar school as ADHD. A local doctor wrote a prescription for a common ADHD drug, without doing a proper diagnosis. Then she developed what they called ODD (opposition defiant disorder). During the years when she was on this drug, if you told her to do something, or stop doing something, she’d glare with hate in her eyes and say, “I hate you, I’ll kill you.” Eventually her mom found a doctor in Atlanta (we’re in SC) who correctly diagnosed autism. He told her that the ADHD drug she’d been taking was the opposite of what she needed. As soon as she stopped taking the drug she started improving. Now, 15 years later she’s always happy and loving, and never reacts with any sign of hate or ODD.

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